For the third consecutive year, Netskope has been named a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SASE Platforms. Our execution has driven real customer outcomes and we believe that shows up in our recognition as a Leader in this year’s Magic Quadrant report. Netskope is also positioned the highest on the execution axis of any other vendor in the report.
AI is reshaping the enterprise faster than any technology shift before it. The enterprise perimeter has expanded again: No longer just users and devices, a growing share of non-human traffic driven by AI agents, robots, microservices, and millions of APIs. Securing this is central to what SASE must now do. Netskope’s focus is singular: Uncompromised SASE that secures and accelerates AI-driven enterprises, from the mid-market to the world’s largest organizations.
In the companion Critical Capabilities report, Gartner expanded its evaluation to five key use cases, and Netskope was positioned with the #1 ranking in three Use Cases, #2 ranking in one Use Case, and #3 ranking in one more. That means we were among the three highest ranking across all five evaluated categories (the only vendor to be positioned as such)
- #1 in Sovereign SASE (4.16/5)
- #1 in Zero-trust SASE Platform (4.43/5)
- #1 in Foundational SASE Platform (4.34/5)
- #2 in Secure branch network modernization (4.13/5)
- #3 in “Coffee Shop” networking (3.93)
We believe this recognition validates Netskope’s strategy and showcases our deep expertise across critical SASE, hybrid work, and AI adoption scenarios. Below are details of the way in which we believe our single-platform architecture maps directly to each of the five Gartner evaluated use cases.
#1 Sovereign SASE: Multi-layer control and compliance via One Network
Geopolitical risks and regional mandates such as EU NIS2 and DORA force organizations to maintain strict data residency without sacrificing network performance. Many SASE vendors have limited coverage and support for micro-sovereignty regions, often quietly exporting sensitive logs and metadata out of country, compromising operational control and violating compliance rules.
Netskope addresses data sovereignty through a multi-layered architectural approach, spanning the data, control, and management planes; and excels in all three sovereignty pillars: data, operational, and technological sovereignty. Crucially, Netskope provides sovereignty over data-in-motion (processing) as well as data-at-rest (storage). NewEdge traffic management zones restrict inline processing to specific regions; for the strictest needs, enterprises and service providers can deploy private infrastructure that federates with NewEdge regions for resilience and expanded reach. And with the enhanced log and metadata storage options announced in May, we extended national data localization to 24 countries, supporting in-country storage across 14 new regions without requiring a local management plane. This micro-sovereignty approach outpaces competitors that restrict logging to far fewer regions, giving enterprises full control over their inline footprint, key management, and where their sensitive data gets stored.
For example, a UK-based financial services firm chose to process its AI and SaaS traffic only in the in-country NewEdge data planes (DPs), as well as store sensitive logs and metadata in the in-country NewEdge management plane (MP) using customer-controlled keys, to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
Without the right architecture, routing web, cloud, SaaS, private app or AI traffic through distant, out-of-region proxies creates crippling latency. The Netskope NewEdge network (underpinning AI Fast Path) leverages extensive peering and route optimization, and its unmatched footprint of full-compute, full-stack edge data centers in 81 regions (more than 120 data centers in total), eliminates performance bottlenecks.
Netskope’s AI Fast Path technology eliminates up to 90% of network latency when users or agents connect to business-critical AI destinations such as Gemini, Copilot, Claude, and others.
Gartner introduced the sovereign SASE use case this year, and we believe that Netskope’s extensive coverage and full control over the entire lifecycle of data led to our positioning as the #1 ranking vendor in this use case’s inaugural year.
#1 Zero-trust SASE platform: Continuous adaptive risk and control via One Engine
Gartner defines this use case as organizations seeking to implement SASE to achieve a zero trust posture for their users, devices, branches and remote locations. This year AI has introduced a complex class of non-human identities. Autonomous AI agents interact with corporate data via web interfaces, integrations, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) connections, creating risk vectors that legacy zero trust architectures miss. Our patented Zero Trust Engine acts as a “shared brain” continuously analyzing telemetry across users, devices, applications, and agents for total context awareness.
With Netskope One, human and non-human identities share the same policy engine, eliminating security blind spots.
An example: when an AI coding agent authorized to read a GitHub repo suddenly attempts to push source code to an external MCP tool, the Zero Trust Engine recognizes sensitive information is being shared across these AI connections and blocks the transaction inline.
Through our Agentic Broker and AI security suite, we have extended zero trust principles across MCP, decoding agent-to-tool traffic, and enforcing granular guardrails across environments including GitHub, Slack, and Notion. Plus, with the single-pass architecture of our NewEdge private cloud (backed by industry-best SLAs for high-speed, low-latency traffic processing) even the most complex policies and deepest levels of inspection with the Zero Trust Engine are possible without introducing performance trade-offs.
The Gartner zero trust SASE platform use case includes reference to contextual security, adaptive access, and robust data protection. We credit our governing non-human AI agent transactions alongside user access as reasons behind Netskope’s #1 ranking for this use case.
#1 Foundational SASE Platform: Operational simplicity via One Console
Tool fragmentation and console sprawl create administrative friction and operational risk. As AI adoption surges, legacy management gaps widen, forcing IT teams to jump between disconnected tools. This challenge is further compounded when platform vendors acquire AI companies and point solutions, creating fragmentation across multiple consoles within their own platforms. We have noticed that some vendors offer a unified console but then sacrifice integration simplicity in their efforts to add feature depth.
The Netskope One console unifies advanced security, advanced networking, deep observability, and AI security and governance in a single UI, purpose-built to meet the complex demands of large, global organizations. This same unification extends to agentic operations, where Netskope One AgentSkope provides a shared architectural foundation for deploying AI agents natively within the same console, instead of yet another standalone tool.
An example: one beta customer, a global professional services organization, used AgentSkope’s DLP AISecOps Agent to review 14 million daily security alerts in minutes, applying contextualized risk assessment to find the needle in the haystack, instead of an analyst manually triaging alerts one by one, all from the same Netskope One console.
For managed services providers (MSPs), Netskope Partner Orchestrator extends this simplicity, providing self-service, multi-tenant provisioning, delivering customer-ready environments in under 15 minutes. Powered by RBAC, it lets MSPs define exactly who can access which tenant and at what level – so they can onboard partners and customers, and separate management responsibilities, without per-tenant setup overhead.
The Gartner Foundation SASE Platform use case is driven by organizations that want to reduce products and vendors to securely connect users/devices to the web, SaaS and private applications. In our minds, it was our integration of AI security and governance alongside advanced security and advanced networking that positioned Netskope as the #1 ranking vendor for this use case.
#2 Secure branch network modernization: Zero trust SASE branch via One SASE Gateway
First generation SD-WAN operated at a basic application layer, identifying a limited set of apps and steering traffic via rigid, explicit policies, with no context-sharing between SD-WAN and SSE. If security flagged a risky app or device, branch SD-WAN had no way to respond.
Netskope One SASE Branch changed that. The same Zero Trust Engine “shared brain” powers our SSE and SD-WAN, delivering granular policies informed by user, device, and app risks, automatically deprioritizing high-risk apps and blocking high-risk IoT devices as conditions change.
An example: if an employee opens an unsanctioned high risk app such as DeepSeek, SD-WAN deprioritizes the traffic while SSE tools step in to coach the user toward an approved Gemini instance; the moment they switch apps, SD-WAN prioritizes that traffic instead, delivering an immediate, coordinated network and security response with zero lag and zero manual intervention.
Branches can also face costly appliance sprawl and outdated networking models. The Netskope One SASE Gateway replaces legacy hardware with a single thin edge appliance that supports edge AI services, running Netskope apps including SD-WAN, advanced routing, 5G/WiFi, firewall, IPS, Publisher, IoT security, and digital experience management (DEM), as well as third party apps. Install what you need, with app-store-like simplicity, right at the edge where the data lives. We also support intricate enterprise environments: Any overlay (5G, internet, MPLS), any deployment (hardware, virtual, cloud, Netskope-hosted), any topology (site-to-site, site-to-cloud, multi-cloud), all without forcing traffic through rigid cloud hairpins.
Secure branch network modernization requires SASE platforms to unify networking and security to eliminate appliance sprawl while dynamically enforcing real-time user, device, and app risk policies, and support advanced routing across any topology. Gartner ranked Netskope #2 in this use case.
#3 “Coffee Shop” networking: Consistent user experience via One Client
Securing modern hybrid work with traditional tools requires a messy, fragmented patchwork of multiple endpoint agents for connectivity, security, data protection, and performance. The Netskope One Client is the industry’s first unified SASE client: a single, lightweight client that fully replaces legacy VPN, delivers SD-WAN performance optimization, and provides access to the full suite of SSE security services, including Universal ZTNA (UZTNA), endpoint DLP, and integrated DEM. We also use AI/ML to assess risk for agentless devices and push granular, risk-based SD-LAN policies to multi-vendor switches, access points, and firewalls, embedding intelligence across the network and dynamically enforcing AI-powered micro-segmentation to contain threats.
For example, an IT director overseeing 50 branch offices wants every location to feel as simple to run as a coffee shop. With Netskope’s Universal ZTNA, employees at any branch connect the same way they would from home, with continuous, identity-based, high-performance access to the applications they need. Instead of maintaining a different architecture and policies for the office versus everywhere else, the IT director delivers the same experience at every location, cutting the administrative burden of managing separate office and remote security stacks.
Together, these capabilities reflect one of our core architectural philosophies of delivering software-driven simplicity wherever work happens. We believe that this is exactly what the Gartner “Coffee Shop” networking use case measures: a simplified, consistent experience for hybrid users without compromising security, and we are proud to be ranked #3 for it.
One platform, architected for the AI era
What does network and security architectural completeness look like? Sovereignty, zero trust, operational simplicity, branch modernization and excellent user experience: Five distinct demands (all amplified by AI demands), in combination, and all met by one platform, without trade-offs.
With one Network, one Engine, one Console, one SASE Gateway, and one Client, Netskope is the only vendor to be among the three highest scoring vendors for all use cases in the SASE Platforms Critical Capabilities report this year. Thanks to our customers’ trust and feedback, we were recognized as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant, and are particularly proud to have been positioned the highest for Ability to Execute.
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for SASE Platforms, Jonathan Forest, et al., 28 July 2026
Gartner, Critical Capabilities for SASE Platforms, Jonathan Forest, et al., 29 July 2026
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